Guess Who's Coming to Dinner movie review (1968)

And there is the plot, borrowed from countless other drawing room comedies about "ineligible" suitors. Only this time the controversial suitor is not a socialist ("Man and Superman"), a newspaper reporter ("The Philadelphia Story") or even a spinster ("Cactus Flower") -- but a Negro.

Of course, the negro is Sidney Poitier. He is a noble, rich, intelligent, handsome, ethical medical expert who serves on United Nations committees when he's not hurrying off to Africa, Asia, Switzerland and all those other places where his genius is required. During a vacation in Hawaii, he meets Katharine Houghton, and they fall in love and come home to break the news to her parents.

Miss Hepburn takes the news rather well ("Just let me sit down a moment and I'll be all right"), but Tracy has his doubts. Although he is a liberal newspaper publisher and a crusader against prejudice, he doesn't want to be hurried into making up his mind. And that's the trouble. Poitier has to catch the 10 p.m. flight to Geneva, you see, so Tracy has to decide before then.

It is easy to ridicule this deadline as contrived and artificial: and it is easy to argue that Poitier's character is too perfect to be convincing. But neither of these aspects bothered me. The artificial deadline is a convention of drawing room comedies. It provides automatic suspense and keeps the action within a short span of time. And Poitier's "perfect Negro" is no more perfect than Miss Houghton's perfect liberal daughter, Miss Hepburn's perfect Rock of Gibraltar mother and Tracy's perfect Spencer Tracy.

The things that did bother me were more subtle. Despite Poitier's reluctance, Miss Hougton insists that HIS parents also be invited to dinner. They are a pleasant middle-aged couple (played by Roy E. Glenn Sr. and Beah Richards), who turn out to be the most believable characters in the story. But their presence leads to two troublesome scenes.

The first occurs when Poitier (who has been unfailingly polite and deferential to Tracy) backs his own father into a corner and lectures him. The Negro father, like the white one, opposes interracial marriage. And Poitier, who has already agreed to abide by Tracy's decision, cruelly attacks his own father's position.

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